Head restraints typically extend upward from the top of a vehicle seatback and are anchored within the seatback. Head restraints serve to protect vehicle occupants from suffering serious injury due to sudden movement of the vehicle, such as, for instance, is experienced in vehicle collisions.
While head restraints are necessary in order to insure passenger safety, at times the head restraints can present difficulties. For example, head restraints can obstruct a driver's view when looking rearward. Also, if a seat is folded forward to allow a passenger to enter the rear portion of a vehicle, the head restraint may contact an object in front of the seat to stop the seat from fully folding down. In vehicles with seats that fold flat into the floor, head restraints must be removed or additional stowage space in the floor of the vehicle must be provided.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,717,516, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, describes a head restraint assembly having a locking assembly 17 that includes a lock element 18 that is received in, and slidingly linearly moveable relative to, a chamber 19 provided in the bottom of a bracket 1 adjacent to the position where one of a pair of head restraint supports 7 is located. See FIGS. 1 through 3. The locking assembly 17 includes a spring element 20 received in a hollow defined in the top portion of lock element 18. The opposite ends of the spring element 20 are captured between an upper wall 18a of the lock element 18 and spring stop 19a projecting into the chamber 19 so that tension in spring element 20 urges the lock element 18 upward. See FIG. 3.
As shown in FIGS. 3 and 5, the spring element 20 in the above-described embodiment is inserted into the into the lock element 18 by inserting the spring element 20 through a small opening 19b defined through a wall of the bracket 1 adjacent the lock element 20. This is a time-consuming process which adds to the expense of manufacturing the head restraint assembly. Moreover, performance of the internal spring stop 19a defined on the bracket 1 is affected by small tolerance changes, and so is difficult to manufacture.